Tag: Anthony Iannarino

If there is one set of actions that can have disproportionate benefit for us, then it has to be movement. Our body is not designed to remain seated for long hours. It has been known for ages it is better to keep moving through out the day rather than exercising for an hour and not doing any physical movement for rest of the day.

Our body craves movement.

It is well-known that women around the world outlive men and are also less likely to suffer from fatal chronic diseases. There are many theories for the reasons this happens, but in my opinion one of the reason they do so is because they move more than men do. They are physically more active (not necessarily) through exercises but by generally moving about much more than men do. Even Simple activities like cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping and spending more time standing than sitting everyday can have significant impact on their health. So, even if you can’t find more time to do exercise, find reasons to move about through the day.

Practice Gratitude:

We live in a world that allows for constant comparisons with everyone else that we know of. Social media allows us to create a facade of happiness and success even if we don’t feel the happiness or success in our real lives.

There is an illusion that there is always someone who is more successful than us, who vacations in better places than us, has a more loving spouse and is happier than us. We can’t help but compare ourselves with those around us. This is an inbuilt function that is extremely difficult to switch off.

What we can do is to counter the feeling of inadequacy with a practice of gratitude.

We could also look at all that we have with us that we can be grateful for – a stable job, decent health, a caring family, three meals a day, a home to stay, a smart phone and a Facebook or Instagram account to stay connected with our friends, the ability to make a difference in millions of lives and a peaceful city to live in.

We can also be grateful for good books, great pieces of art, soul wrenching music, beauty around us in nature… We get the point.

If we go looking out for things for which we can be grateful for, there is an abundance of these. So, lets start a practice of being grateful for at least 3 things every single day. This by itself has the ability to make a significant impact on our stress levels.

Be Present:

We are living in a generation where there are a million things that we could be doing at every given moment. The combination of a smart phone and its ability to connect to the internet has enabled this single device to offer us a never-ending stream of information that can both keep us entertained or engaged.

Add to this the proliferation of screens connected to internet all around us, which can identify who we are and tailor what they show based on our likes and preferences.

Add to this our very own conditioned minds which either worry about something could potentially happen in the future or about something that just happened.

All of these forces work to make it extremely difficult for us to stay in the present moment. It not only takes practice but we also need to plan and work towards living in the present moment.

This is not very difficult as every child can do it with ease but as we grow older, we tend to lose this ability as we don’t use it as much as we used it while we were kids.

It’s not that difficult as people make it out to be, if we learn how to do this.

The trick here is to use a reminder to check if we are fully present in the moment or not. It could be as simple as our watch or even our phones. We just need to train our minds to think of this question every time we see, touch or think about this item. Once we check, we just bring ourselves to the present moment.

Plan:

Life is full of paradoxes, some apparent and some not so apparent. While it is very important to live in the present moment, we also need to be able to deliberate about what we want to pay attention to and what we need to avoid.

This means that we need to have a clear idea about what we want to achieve on any given day. This goes on to show that we need to have a goal we are working towards. We need to have an overarching destination towards which we are moving and we need to identify the most important actions that we need to take every single day that will move us closer to the goal.

If we are not deliberate about how we spend our time and our daily activity, we can be sure that our destination will most likely remain out of reach.

So, have a plan. We can change the plan as we go along through the day but we need to have a plan to start the day.

One of the best way to plan that I have seen work really well is the one suggested by Stephen Covey. We start with an overarching goal, then break it down into yearly, quarterly and monthly goalposts. Then we identify the actions that we need to take on a regular basis and block them out on a weekly basis. This becomes sacrosanct and everything else can take up all the other available time. We work on the big rocks first.

Say No:

I know too many people who are stressed out and constantly anxious as they take on much more than they can handle.

They either haven’t learnt to say no or are afraid of saying “No”.

This is another one of the skills that if developed well can have significant impact on our stress and happiness levels.

Saying “No” is by itself an art that we need to practice and learn.

The better we get at this the more opportunities we will have to say “Yes” to the things that we really want to do and can provide meaning to us.

Have Fun:

Having fun as an adult is under-rated.

As we grow into adults, there is an overbearing expectation that we need to behave in a certain manner and all other behaviours are not acceptable. This need and compulsion to comply to social expectation has meant that we have forgotten to find happiness in the smallest things in life.

I used to love getting wet in the first rain of the rainy season while growing up. I still would love to do that. The moment I bring it up as an option, people around me immediately respond with the quip – “Grow up” or “Stop behaving like a kid”.

Somehow, as a society we have set expectations that adults can have fun only in certain activities. All other activities are banned for us once we grow up.

How absurd!

Now, I am not advocating that each one of us needs to go out and start behaving like kids again. What I am advocating is that we need to find out what fun means for us and go have fun that way.

What I am advocating is that

We should not just plan to have fun during the weekend or holidays or after office hours. We need to plan and have fun every single day.

Learn:

Research has shown that we can continue to grow brain mass and new neural connections even after we have grown up. Research has also shown that someone with an active brain can avoid diseases like ALS or Alzheimer’s.

Add to this the pace of change around us. Every day, there is something new being invented. Everyday there is something new to read about. Everyday there is something new to learn.I have a long reading list that I try to cover every single day.

One of the ways to learn every single day is to reflect on the day at the end of the day.

This is a process by which we can learn from every single day of our lives. We can learn about people around us, we can learn about our own decision-making process, we can learn about how our teams think and act. We can learn about the challenges that we faced. We can learn about patterns that we would otherwise miss. Let’s try and learn something new everyday.

Empathise:

One of the qualities that make us inherently human is our ability to empathise with our fellow humans.

This is a unique ability that if honed and used well can help improve our relationships significantly. We don’t need any research to know that the biggest stress for all of us arises from our relationships with others – spouse, parents, kids, employees, managers, government officials, etc.

If we are able to empathise with others, we can significantly reduce the friction caused due to mis-understandings cause within relationships.

Also, this can help us build better products, make us better leaders, sell more effectively. Overall, great RoI for a simple skill.

The key is that this is also similar to any other muscle that we have in our body. The more we exercise this muscle, the stronger it becomes.

With daily practice, we can continue to get better at empthizing, irrespective of how good we are to start with.

Be Patient:

We live in an era where we want everything instantly. We like instant coffee. We like instant entertainment (streaming music/video wherever we are). We like instant knowledge (Google, Wiki, Books on Kindle). We have lost our ability to wait for anything. The moment we have to wait in a queue to get our groceries billed and it takes a few minutes extra for the clerk and we get impatient and reach for our phones.

Most good things in life take time.

It takes time to write and publish a good book. It takes time to give birth to another human. IT takes time to plant and grow a vineyard. It takes time to make a movie. It takes time to build a business. It takes time to convince and move people. It takes time to transform an organisation or a nation. We need to learn to be patient. This is again a muscle. The more we practice, the better we get at it.

Travel:

It is well-known that travelling is good for us in many ways. When we are travelling and in an alien land, our ability to stay in the present is heightened.

We allow ourselves to become our curious self.

We observe things much more than otherwise. We move outside our monotonous auto-mode of existence. This is exciting. It can also be a lot of fun.

You also learn a lot through these observations. You are also able to build a database of ideas which you can then mix and match with other ideas in your mind already and come up with new ideas when needed.

Travel also teaches us humility and a lot about ourselves and our comfort zones.

This post was inspired by a post by Anthony Iannarino on his blog here.

Like this:

If you know me at all, you would already know that I read a lot of stuff – right from business topics like (Sales, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing) to personal topics like philosophy, religion, psychology, habit formation, economics and the lot.

I used to share a collection of articles that I really thought were well written or were thought provoking for me, almost everyday till a few months back. Some of my readers have indicated that they miss those collections in place, that it saves them time and requested that I start posting these collection of content again.

So, here we go. Below is a list of posts that I think were really the best among a lot of content on sales that i read in the recent past. So, here we go:

In this blog post, Anthony Iannarino shares a list of attributes that he admires in a sales force. I really think that if there were a sales team that wanted to create a team manifesto for them to live by, this list would be a great starting point. I particularly like the attribute about helping their team mates succeed.

This is something that is not very common in sales teams at all, but can play a significant role in the overall success of the sales team. I did write about it earlier myself. You can read my post here.

If you are a sales leader and want to inspire your team and get them to rally around together, this is a set of attributes that you should aspire your team to achieve.

Another blog post by Anthony (I seem to really like his posts, of late). In this one, he shares his insights on how to deal with your irrational competitor. Every sales team faces some irrational competitor who wants to take away market share at any cost, who is willing to go to any lengths, give irrational discounts, make promises that they already know that can’t be fulfilled and take your customers away.

So, how do you deal with such competitors? Not the usual way. For Anthony’s insights on this, read the post here.

In his inimitable style Seth Godin brings forth a very important question that all of us as sales executives or sales leaders need to address. Whenever there is a customer who stalls or questions the value that our solutions bring to them, we default to providing them more information – more use cases, more business case, sharing more examples of how and where your solutions have succeeded.

We are assuming that the customer is stalling due to lack of information. What if that is not true? In my experience, most of the times it is not true. The reason the customer is stalling could be because they are not sure, they are afraid of making the commitment required on their part, they are afraid that you might not deliver what you promise to deliver. The issue could be trust or something else.

Mostly, ignorance is not the problem. You can read his really short blog (maybe even shorter than my preamble here) here.

Once you have identified that ignorance is not the problem and shoving more information will not help, what do you do? This is where, I really liked a blog post written by Bernadette Jiwa. In this post she talks about having a if-then (storytelling) strategy.

This strategy can be helpful in any environment, retail or otherwise. Can we identify certain situations or triggers in our sales process and have a ready story to tell in those situations. These emotional triggers need emotional responses and stories do it really well. Great sales executives do this intuitively, but this is really a skill that can be learnt and taught.

Do you have a if-then story for emotional triggers in your sales process.? If not, try and develop one. It’s your job as the sales leader to do this.

Once we win customers, then it is time to deliver our commitments and promises. As a sales executive, it might not be you who delivers what was promised. But you are indeed the person who committed the deliverables to your customers.

They trusted you and now it is your job to ensure that your commitments are honoured. When they are not being honoured, either in spirit or in letter, customers will hold you responsible and accountable.

They will write to you about the issues they have with the service standards, about challenges that they have working with someone on your team or about any other random thing that irks them. I have seen sales executives continue to complain about all these emails that they keep getting from their customers, the expectations that the customer is having off them, even though they realise that its not part of their job.

In this insightful and critical post, Anthony (again) shares a perspective that all sales executives who complain forget – which is complacency, neglect and Entitlement kills a sales executives future. Read the post and honestly think about your behaviour towards your customers.

Are you complaining that they are your customers? If so, think again? And more importantly, CHANGE.

Conclusion:

I do hope that you liked this collection of blog posts that I really liked on the topic of sales and selling. I will see you soon in another edition of the Best Among What I Read on a different topic sometime soon.

Like this:

One of the things I do over time is to discover new people and learn from new sources. I had shared my earlier list of 25 insanely interesting people in 2014. You can find that list here.

So, here is a list of some of the insanely interesting people that i came across in 2016. I do hope you will find some of these people and the great work that they are doing interesting enough to start following them. I must say that I was fortunate enough to discover these people online and learn so much from them.

I do hope that you will spare some time and try and follow some of these folks and the insanely interesting work that they are putting out into the world. They are changing the world as we know it.

Here is my list of insanely interesting people I came to know in 2016 (in alphabetical order)

Adam Grant – Super Power – Being Prolific at Original Thinking

I was introduced to Adam through a podcast episode that Srinivas Rao put out on his show – Unmistakable Creative (BTW, it was also one of the best episodes of the show). Then I went on to listen to his book – Originals on Audible. Loved the book. Then I went ahead and bought his other book – Give and Take and loved that as well. I have been highly influenced by both his books and hope I am able to put some of the learnings from the books into practise.

You can buy his book Originals here and Give and Take here. You can connect with him on twitter at @AdamMGrant.

Anders Ericsson – Super Power – Expert on How to Become an Expert

He is the author of the book – Peak and the proponent of the concept of deliberate practice. I got an opportunity to read his book and have a conversation with him for my podcast and was blown away by the simplicity & openness of this expert on expertise & human performance. He had a significant influence in my thinking and understanding about how does one go about becoming an expert in any given field. So much so that I bought 25 copies of his book to give away to my customers, with the request to gift the book to someone they thought had the potential or the aspiration to become world class at their chosen field. You can find more information about him and his contact at his university page here. You can buy the book here. You can listen to my conversation with him here.

Anthony Iannarino – Super Power – Inspiring Greatness – not just in selling.

I found Anthony through my search for good sales blogs. His blog is literally called The Sales Blog. This is one of the best sales blog that i have come across which doesn’t just talk about how to be great at Sales but also be a great individual. I had the opportunity to talk to him for my podcast. You can listen to the episode here.

BJ Fogg – Super Power – Making Behaviour Change Happen

I don’t remember how I discovered BJ. He is a behaviour scientist and is an expert in behaviour design. Like so many people, I participated in his online behaviour change workshop – Tiny Habits and was blown away by the results that I got from the same. You can look at his model of behaviour change here.

If behaviour design is something that you would like to explore, BJ Fogg is the person to go to. I do hope that i am able to get to talk to him for my podcast sometime soon (truth being said, I haven’t reached out to him yet).

Cal Newport – Super Power – Doing Deep Work

I came across Cal when I listened to him on every one of the podcasts that I follow and talk about deep work and its importance. Then I read (listened to his) book – Deep Work and my respect and admiration for him went up significantly. When Anders suggested that i should host him on my show, I reached out to him and he immediately agreed to be on the show. I am super excited to talk to him and get to understand him a bit more deeply :-).

Dan Gregory – Super Power – Making the Impossible Possible

I came to know of Dan and his work through reading his book – Selfish, Scared and Stupid! He is the Co-Founder, President and CEO of The Impossible Institute™, a strategic think-tank that helps organisations understand what motivates the staff, customers and communities so that they can make impossible things possible.

I had the chance to talk to him for my show and was blown away by his calm, thoughtful and brilliant answers to my questions. You can listen to the episode here.

If you are running a small/medium sized business and want to explore how to significantly grow your business, Dan is the man to turn to.

Daniel Burrus – Super Power – Connecting Present to the Future

I first came across Daniel when I read his book – Flash Foresight. In the book, he talks about Hard Trends and Soft Trends and how if organisations that understood the hard trends can then align their strategies with these trends and benefit immensely.

He also runs a research organisation called Burrus Research and blogs every week. I have followed his blog keenly and have found that he is insightful and extremely well articulated. He has this uncanny ability to predict the hard trends and apply it to the current day-to-day strategy. You can follow his blog here and connect with him on twitter at @DanielBurrus

Dilip Soman: Super Power – The Power of Nudge

Dilip Soman is a Professor of Marketing. His research is in the area of behavioural economics and its applications to consumer wellbeing, marketing and policy. He is also the director of the India Innovation Institute at the University of Toronto.

He is also working with the Nudge team being created by the Indian government to implement nudge strategies in the policy making in India.

I had the opportunity to host him for my show (to be published shortly) and was super excited and influenced by his thoughts.

James Victore – Super Power – Insanely Creative & Igniting Greatness

I found James Victore through his YouTube channel. He was introduced to me via Seth Godin in one of his interviews. James is a creative and hosts (used to host) a show on YouTube called – Burning Questions. He would take questions that his followers sent to him and answer them.

He was funny, personal, insightful and would push people to not settle for mediocrity and go for greatness. He just launched a channel on Patreon to allow people who need his advice to go to and get deep, long and insightful commentary.

You can find James’s work here and register to attend his workshops here. His YouTube channel is here & his patreon page is here.

If you are a creative person, I would strongly recommend that you follow and interact with him on twitter @JamesVictore.

Jessica Hagy – Super Power – Morphing Emotions to Charts

Jessica runs an immensely popular blog – This is Indexed. She is an award winning creative and has a very easy way to pick complex topics and show them in a simple chart. She has been doing this on a daily basis for a long long time. He has also illustrated – The Art of War, the quintessential book on strategy and living. She is another person whom I have not had the chance to talk to yet but would love to connect and host on my show to talk about her super power.

Richard Thaler – Super Power – Nudge You to do what is Right for You

Richard Thaler is the co-author of the seminal book on behavioural economics – Nudge. This book changed how I saw influence and started questioning a lot of my decisions. He recently released his book – MisBehaving which went on to become a best seller as well. He is probably the one guy who understands nudging and how can one design products or policies to help people do what is the right thing to do through choice architecture.

I think BJ Fogg is the guy for personal behaviour change and Richard is the guy for bringing about mass behaviour change. If you have ever seen a pricing structure with three options and where two of the options seem absurd or one is highlighted as the best option, you are seeing his work being put in action.

He has worked with the British government to set up their nudge unit which is a shining example of how governments now understand that just providing options doesnt move the needle when it comes to doing good – they need to nudge the people to do what is right for them and for the government.

RJ Shraddha – Super Power – Insanely Insane

Shraddha is a RJ at a radio station (104 Fever FM) in Bangalore, the city where i live. Her show – Mad mornings is one of the most popular shows in the city and she has a cult following among her listeners. To say that she is funny, hilarious, super smart, a bit mad, extremely creative and alive would be an understatement. She is just amazing.

I had the opportunity to speak to her in her studio and loved the interaction, warmth and the energy she brought with her. You can listen to my episode starring her here and connect with her on her Facebook page here.

Robert B. Cialdini – Super Power – Building Influence Through Presuasion

I first came to know of Robert when his book was referred by not one but many people who were on my list of 2014 insanely interesting people. I read the book and got to know why he is so revered in the marketing circles.

The book was a practical guide on how to influence people and their decisions systematically and definitely. Then he came up with his next book Pre-suasion. I got my hands on the book as quickly as i could and read it cover to cover – twice.

I was familiar to the concept of psychological framing but this book took this to a different level. He shares strategies about what one could do to create an environment which stacks the deck in your favour to influence decisions. I strongly believe that if your work involves you influencing people around (upwards, sidewards & downwards), you MUST read both his books. I do hope that i am able to convince him to talk to me for my audience sometime soon.

I discovered Rohit through his book – Non-Obvious, where he shares his method to curate trends. He calls it the Haystack Method. He also updates his book Non-Obvious every year and shares information about trends that he sees playing out in the near future. What makes him more interesting is that he also reviews how his predictions in the past year have played out.

He also has a weekly news-letter Non-Obvious insights, where he hand picks 5-6 stories that point towards a trend and are worthy of our attention.

Roman Mars – Super Power – Craft and Share Powerful Stories

Roman is a podcaster and hosts the immensely popular 99% Invisible podcast. Seth Godin introduced me to Roman Mars via one of his rants. Since then, not only have I not missed a single episode that he has put out, but I went back in time to listen to every single podcast episode that he ever released.

Even my 12 year old son loves listening to this show – probably the only podcast that we both like listening to. He picks his stories with care and is amazingly great at weaving the story in a way that you would want to immerse yourself in the story.

You can listen to his podcast here and sign up for his newsletter here.

You can listen to some of Roman’s favourite episodes of his show here. You can connect with him on twitter at @romanmars

Sanjay Manaktala – Super Power – Making You RoFL.

I came across Sanjay’s YouTube channel when someone sent me a link to his parody song – IT Guy 2.0. Since then I have watched every single video that he has put up on his channel, including the senti Sanjay. I find him to be extremely funny and uncannily current.

You can find his YouTube channel here and connect with him on Twitter @smanak .

Stephen Dubner – Super Power – Story telling Economist

Stephen is the co-author of the Freakonomics series of books and hosts the hugely popular podcast – Tell me Something I dont know. The amount of trivia I have learnt on his show is just something I never thought I will ever know. His show definitely made me smarter.

He has the uncanny ability to weave a story out of any economic topic and captivate the audience. I do hope that I am able to meet him sometime and host him on my show sooner than later.

Team Film Bilder – Super Power – Building Animations That Speak to You

I stumbled onto one of their videos through an email I got from Open Culture (you should so sign-up for their daily newsletter). This team based in Germany releases short animated films which have inspired me for sometime now.

The award winning team is extremely creative and use animations to share universal stories that have the potential to speak to each one of us in a very different way, based on our own mental make-up at that exact moment.

You can follow their YouTube channel here. My favourite video among them all is here.

Team Maati Baani – Super Power – Creating Collaborative Music Magic

I generally dont like to listen to songs and music with very few exceptions. One of the exceptions is when team Maati Baani (Karthik Shah and Nirali Karthik) put out one of their songs. What fascinates me is that not only do they release music that is mind-blowing, but are able to do so by collaborating with other musicians from around the world (like Michael Jackson Tribute or Jao Piya here).

I know from experience that it is hard work to produce high quality music, even more to do so by collaborating with other musicians, and sometimes from across the world.

You can follow their YouTube channel here and connect with them on twitter at @maatibaani.

Tim Harford – Super Power – Making Economics Make Sense to commoners.

He is popularly known as the Undercover economist and is the author of the book Messy. I had the opportunity to talk to him for my podcast (to be published sometime soon). He hosts a popular radio show – More or Less. The best thing about him is that he is able to pick complex economic concepts and make it simple enough for non-economic folks can understand and make sense.

In this post, Anthony Iannarino (who was on the podcast earlier) talks about the importance of where we focus and spend our attention and the impact that this can have on our lives. If there is only one thing that we could improve upon to make the biggest impact in our lives, it would be our ability to focus and do deep work.

In this post, the author of the Dilbert comics, Scott Adams argues that we dont just think with our brains but also with out body. He goes on to say

I realize that the concept I’m explaining is both obvious and radical at the same time. On one hand, you know from experience that your thoughts are directly influenced by what your body is experiencing. But because you also believe your brain is the special vessel of your free will, consciousness, and soul, you might believe the brain can also make its own independent decisions. It can’t. It is a computer that responds to inputs. Give it the right inputs and you’ll get the right outputs. And your body is the user interface.

In this short video, the wonderful people who run “The School of Life” YouTube channel share a different perspective on History and share how each one of us, armed with the right perspective has the potential to create history.

I recently finished listening to the audio version of Cal Newport’s latest book – Deep Work.

We live in a constantly distracted world and are losing the ability to do real deep work. Cal shares with us the importance of doing such deep work and also shares tactics around how we can set ourselves to do deep work. Highly recommended.

In this episode, we host Anthony Iannarino. He is an international keynote speaker, author and a sales leader. He posts daily sales tips and insights on his blog – www.thesalesblog.com. This is one of the most widely read sales blog in the world.

Why is he on the show:

Apart from his blog, he also hosts a podcast – “In the Arena” and has written the book – ‘The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need”. He’s an adjunct faculty member at Capital University’s School of Management and Leadership where he teaches Personal Selling, Social Media Marketing and Persuasive Marketing. He also runs a B2B sales coaching and consultancy – B2B sales coach and consultancy.

What are we talking about:

In a wide ranging conversation we cover the following:

Some of the basic principles that are needed to succeed in the world of sales and selling

What is the role of a sales manager?

How can entrepreneurs increase their business, recruit a sales leader and set up a sales team?

The fascination with numbers and why it is not necessarily the best metric to look at.